


The Conversation

by JustAnotherUnderstudy



Series: This Should Totally Be A Thing [45]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, M | Olivia Mansfield Lives, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-08-10 01:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherUnderstudy/pseuds/JustAnotherUnderstudy
Summary: This is a prequel to "The World in My Arms."





	The Conversation

Gareth Mallory, the newly assumed “M” of MI6, slipped a thick file into his briefcase as he stood at the end of the hospital bed.

“While I don’t disagree with the guards you have chosen, ma’am,” he said to the woman in the bed. “I’d like to assign Bond, at least at first.”

“No,” she said sharply.

“Why not?” Mallory asked.

“He’s not to know,” she told him.

Mallory paused as he snapped his case shut and locked it.

“I don’t think that’s wise, ma’am,” he said. “It will be a detriment to Bond if he continues to believe you are dead.”

“He will be fine,” Olivia told him.

Mallory stared at her for a moment, then shook his head.

“I’m not sure why you can’t see it,” he said. “Bond is entirely devoted to you.”

Olivia sighed.

“You hardly know the man, Gareth,” she admonished. “I’ve known him since he was nearly a lad, wet behind the ears.

“He is devoted to the service,” she concluded.

“You truly believe that?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Then why the subterfuge?” he asked. “Why have me give him this video to continue the course you’ve set him on?”

Olivia was silent as she glared at him and Mallory knew he had her.

“If he was devoted to the service, I could give him the same information and you could expect him to act on it in the same manner,” he said, needlessly, he was sure.

He held her gaze a moment longer before he lifted his case.

“Have it your way, ma’am,” he said. “But you are making a huge mistake where James is concerned.”

“Look, Mallory,” she interrupted. “If he is as devoted to me as you think, it is only because he has had no mother and views me as some sort of twisted mother figure.”

Mallory gave her an incredulous look.

“There is absolutely nothing filial in the way Bond looks at you,” he said.

Olivia looked sincerely surprised and Mallory could finally see that she had no idea.

“When this is done,” he said as he walked toward the hospital room door. “We will revisit it.”

At the door, he paused and turned back to her.

“I only hope that there will be something left of the man at that point,” he said.

“Oh, Gareth,” she chided. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

~~Several months later~~

Olivia sat at her kitchen table in the penthouse suite in Hyde Park. The information she had just received from M was disturbing in ways she hadn’t imagined she could be disturbed anymore.

She’d spent the past several months recovering. M had kept her hidden away despite the mess of the attempted merger of MI5 and MI6. Now, things had settled down and M had decided to keep his promise to her to revisit their conversation about James.

As she lifted her tea cup to her mouth, she was impressed that her hand was far steadier than she felt inside.

There had been much time to think, and even more to worry about James while she was recovering. She’d paid rapt attention to the news, knowing M couldn’t share any of the information with her. All she could say now, at the end of it all, was she was glad James had lived.

Several times, she’d wondered if M wasn’t right and perhaps there truly would be nothing left of James. Though she hadn’t known the extent to which SPECTRE had a grudge against James, she knew he was one of their targets.

But he’d come through and brought an end to the organization. Further proving that her unwavering trust in him had not been misplaced.

“I have a proposition,” M interrupted her thoughts as he set his own tea cup back on the table.

“I’ll send him to you,” he started.

“No,” she said. “He left the service and has a nice young woman, he certainly doesn’t need me now.”

M sighed and ran his hands over his face.

“God, you are so stubborn,” he groaned.

“And you are an utter fool,” she retorted.

She reached for the pot to pour him some more tea.

“To actually believe that a young man like Bond would have some sort of, what, sexual desire for me?”

It was absurd, Olivia thought. No matter how much she loved James, or had wanted him all these years, to think he returned those feelings was nothing short of madness.

“This goes far beyond sex, and you know it,” he insisted. “Have you heard nothing of what I told you about Blofeld?”

Franz Oberhauser had been alive all these years, plotting to destroy someone his father had asked him to care for. He was nothing more than a spiteful, murderous little prat. M was handling it through legal channels but Olivia might have been hard pressed not to deal with it in a personal way that would result in the absolute end of the head of SPECTRE.

“I heard you,” she said. “Blofeld obviously thought that James viewed me as his mother.”

M sighed and bowed his head as he shook it.

“James is in love with you,” he said as he looked back at you.

“Oh, please,” she complained. “I will bet you £1000 that he is not.”

The look M gave her made Olivia feel as if she had just fallen into an enemy’s trap.

“Alright,” he said. “You’re on.”


End file.
